I just returned from a spectacularly restful and warm vacation! I was warmed by the sun for 10 whole days, which I didn’t realized just how much I needed it until I was down there. It’s been unprecedentedly cold here in New England and I was in desperate need of some natural vitamin D. Though that said something was going through my head while I was down in sunny southern Florida.

“Wherever you go there you are”: I have been in love with the writings of Jon Kabat-Zin since the mid 90’s and his book Wherever You Go, There You Are is something that I think of often. We take ourselves with us everywhere we go. All of what we are is with us all the time. And I was reminded of this. Everyone leaves for their vacation with either hopes, expectations or intentions for their time away from home. And sometimes while away our time doesn’t live up to what we were hoping for. So a shift in expectation is needed. A thought reframe is needed (or in my case a reframing of my thoughts about returning home to the cold 🙂 was needed). Then there are the thoughts we have about our vacation, I’ll be more…. peaceful, active whatever your thoughts are and then you’re attached to those expectations. What would happen if we let go of that? Allowed ourselves to be exactly as we are the way we are?

“You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.”

In the next few weeks I thought I’d introduce you to some of my favorite people who have guided me on the road to awareness and today it’s Jon Kabat-Zinn.

My birthday just passed and I was thinking about celebrating and what that means to me…. We are all so use to celebrating the big things like momentous birthdays, graduations, births and so on. But what do you so for the smaller, the less acknowledged road markers? What do you do to honor or celebrate the small things? I believe that if we give ourselves permission to celebrate the small things (and who’s to say that they are even really small) we will have more to celebrate. And then there will be more big things to celebrate.

Today I do not have a headache, which for me is something to celebrate. So how am I going about celebrating. I am listening to records as I work! Which I am normally unable to do when there is pain in my head due to an inability to concentrate. How you celebrate is really irrelevant. What is relevant is that you acknowledge the moment. Give it its just dessert. Ohhh and I think I will have some dessert to celebrate! In all seriousness, acknowledging the good in ones life is as important as acknowledging any feeling.

In all my years of coaching I see people focus more on the bad feelings and gloss over the good. Those two words are italicized because they are only as weighted as we make them. Everything is impermanent so why not acknowledge more of the good! Celebrate! Celebrate! Because if you choose to focus on the juicy things you’ll have more yummy things to celebrate!

Since today is groundhog day I think it only apropos that I confess about winter. Every year when it rears its head I feel the need to hibernate. To crawl into bed and stay there until spring. To metaphorically plug up my but like a bear and not climb out of my cave. But in all seriousness I have a harder time being productive, or at least I think I do. I start to feel guilty the moment the cold weather sets in because I feel like I “should” be doing things differently. But this winter I’m doing things a bit differently… I’m allowing myself to be exactly as I am. Leaving myself alone. Allowing the slowness. the needing more sleep and wanting to keep warm.

I’m from a family of “workers” if we are not busy we are not being productive and when I am not… I feel guilty. So I have asked myself what would happen if I left myself alone? Allowed myself the comfort of the warmth. Although in my mind I thing that the world would fall apart but in reality I still get up meditate, exercise and get to work. So what’s the worst thing that could happen? ….Nothing that make my world fall apart . How much more productive would I be by allowing myself a little extra sleep, a nap or a day here and there where I stick to my heating pad? Well for myself I’m more productive with the time I have since I am releasing the guilt. Why waste my time with that catabolic thought process which immediately takes me out of the moment and into feelings which don’t support me. Somehow I seem to be enjoying the winter a bit more. I will admit I enjoy it so much more since I work from home and I don’t have to drive anywhere. What a spectacular thing! So this winter I am learning to rephrase the way I look at it.

So I guess, how gentle are you with the things that you think you “should” do? How do you keep from piling a lot of “should” on yourself? How do you handle to winter?